Chapter 10: The White Double Doors Finally Open
The white double doors had stood at the end of the foyer like a sealed mouth. Since the water had been thrown and the plates broken, no one had crossed their threshold. Guests watched from behind Evander, their attention moving between Cambria’s dry, furious posture and me, still wrapped in a borrowed coat with Poppy pressed against my side.
The envelope was inside my uniform, flattened beneath my hand. Its paper had softened at the edges, but the words remained visible whenever I remembered them: I am carrying your child.
Evander reached the doors first. He tried the handles. They did not move.
Cambria came after him, the satin of her dress whispering over the marble. She stopped close enough that I felt the cold air displaced by her movement.
“She threatened me, Evander.”
The sentence belonged to the earlier scene, but it seemed to follow us into the corridor. Cambria used it again through her expression, through the way she pointed toward the locked doors as if they were proof of something only she understood. Evander did not answer. He looked at the lock, then at the narrow space beneath the doors.
A thin line of gold light showed there.
He removed a key from his pocket. I had not seen it before. For one moment, Cambria’s face changed—not fear exactly, but calculation interrupted. Evander fitted the key into the lock and turned it.
The bolt slid back with a heavy metallic scrape.
Poppy tightened her arms around my waist. I could have kept her in the foyer, away from whatever waited beyond the doors. But the room had been closed while the party continued around us, and the envelope had been found in the middle of that same silence. If I let Evander enter alone, Cambria would have the first chance to name everything inside.
I took Poppy’s hand.
She looked up at me, her red ribbon hanging loose from tangled hair. I nodded once, though I was not certain what I was promising. Then I followed Evander through the opening.
The room beyond was smaller than I expected. It held a writing desk, two narrow cabinets, and a long table covered with folded linen. The party’s music reached us faintly through the walls, reduced to a dull pulse. A lamp burned beside the desk, lighting a scatter of papers and a dark glass bottle.
Evander crossed to the desk. He lifted the top sheet, then stopped.
I recognized the yellowed paper beneath it.
Not the envelope. A matching sheet, folded into thirds, lay beside an open ledger. Its corner carried the same uneven stain that marked the envelope I had taken from my uniform. Beneath the stain, a line of handwriting showed through the fold. I could not read the whole sentence, only the beginning: I am—
Cambria entered behind us.
Her hand struck the door, pushing it inward. “Lora—”
I moved Poppy behind me. Cambria’s eyes went to the paper, then to the envelope beneath my palm. The room seemed to narrow around those two pieces of paper.
Evander placed his hand over the ledger before Cambria could reach it. He did not tear the sheet away or hide it. He simply held it flat.
Cambria stepped toward me. I shifted back, keeping Poppy against the wall and away from the space between us. The choice cost me; the soaked uniform pulled coldly at my shoulders, and my knees still hurt from the marble. But Poppy’s fingers were small and steady in mine.
Evander looked from the matching paper to the envelope. Then he looked toward the open doorway, where voices and footsteps had begun to gather.
He could carry the papers into the foyer and let every waiting face decide what they meant. Or he could close the door again and preserve the discovery until it could be compared properly.
He chose neither silence nor spectacle.
Evander folded the loose sheet without creasing the writing and placed it beside the envelope. Then he took both into his possession, keeping them visible.
May you like
The music outside stopped.
Evander turned toward the sound, the papers in his hand, and committed to verifying what the room had concealed before accepting the loudest account.
